Legacy
by Darkover
Summary: Thoughts of a young girl as she looks at a photograph.


Title: "Legacy"

Author: Darkover, a.k.a. TheQueenly1

Pairing: Giles and Buffy, sort of.

Disclaimer: As far as I know, all the characters of the Buffyverse were created and owned by Joss Whedon, not me. I am merely borrowing them for a while, and I am not making a profit from this. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, so please do not sue!

Rating: G, a.k.a. FRC

Spoilers: None that I can think of.

Summary: Thoughts of a young girl as she looks at a photograph.

They were her great-grandparents: maybe her great-great-grandparents, or so she had been told. The young girl brushed her short dark hair out of her eyes, the better to see the photograph more closely. Photograph—now that was an anachronism. No one carried around photos any more. She probably should get rid of the thing—it was so old, dirty, and creased that she could hardly make out their features any more. But the girl had never had much in the way of personal possessions, and she had always found this photo rather consoling; it reminded her that she had not just sprung up out of nothing. That even if no one wanted her, that even if she were alone in the world, she was part of a past.

Not that she knew much about these two people. The girl scrutinized the rapidly-ebbing faces of the couple with their arms around each other. She did not even know their names or what they did, just that, according to her late mother, they were her ancestors, they had been important people, and that they had loved each other very much.

The woman in the photo was blonde, but after so much time, almost all that could be discerned of her was her hair color. She was slender and quite short, at least compared with the man. The blonde woman gazed directly into the camera in a way that struck her young female descendant as fearless. Her arms were wound tightly around the man, as if she would never let him go.

Not that the man in the photo seemed to wish for release. If the blonde woman was staring straight into the camera, the man—darker-haired and much taller than the woman in his arms—was gazing directly at her. He did not even seem to be completely aware of the camera, only of the young woman he held so close. He was not looking at her so much as watching her, and there was no mistaking the look of love on his face, a love so profound that it could not be obliterated from the photo entirely, even years of its disintegration. His young descendant sighed and flipped her own dark hair out of her eyes once more. The man—her own great, or maybe great-great-grandfather, if the story was true—fascinated her even more than the blonde woman did. What kind of a man would devote his entire life to a woman, as he apparently had? For according to family lore, that was exactly what the tall man in the photograph had done, and the look of quiet adoration on his face certainly bore that out. The young dark-haired girl studied the photo wistfully, hoping that some man would look at her that way someday. It was not likely, though. According to family lore, the man in the photograph was the last of his kind. The dark-haired girl was not sure what that meant—whether it was meant as a poetic reference to his complete devotion to the blonde woman, or something more specific. She pulled the creased photo closer to her face, not even aware of the intensity of her frown as, for the umpteenth time, her stare bored into the picture. She so wished she knew more about them….

"FRAY!"

The girl started, and slipped the treasured photo back into her pocket.

"What are you doing in there? It's already dark—time for you to go on patrol!"

"Coming," she muttered, the stake slipping from her sleeve into her hand. Time to go out and kill vampires. Somebody had to do it, but how had she gotten elected to that dubious position?

As she strode out into the night, she briefly wondered if her being chosen for this job had something to do with being the descendant of that couple in her old photograph. She let the thought dissipate without serious reflection. After all, it was hardly likely that something from so far in the past would have any bearing on things now, was it?


End file.
